Red Herring's magazine has not been regularly printed in ages. Today, its its website has been displaying error messages — not that readers are missing much of the understaffed RedHerring.com's output. Herring's conference business alone has been sustaining Alex Vieux's rocky tech-publishing empire. But that, too, seems to be falling apart. A commenter has posted what he claims is an email from Vieux announcing the cancellation of next week's Red Herring Wireless conference in Beijing. At first it struck me as ludicrous that Vieux would cancel one of his cash-cow events. But I called the host hotel, the Ritz-Carlton Beijing, and staff there confirmed that the event was off. Vieux's email cites "difficult personal family health problems" as the reason. If true, it is most unlucky for Vieux that these health issues just happened to coincide with an eviction from Herring's Belmont headquarters.

Dear XXXXXXXX

A number of difficult personal family health problems have led me to make a few hard choices related to Red Herring Wireless.

Indeed, for the first time in nineteen years, I have decided to postpone an event. Red Herring Wireless has been rescheduled to the mid September in Beijing - we will notify you of the exact date in the coming weeks.

In Beijing this month we had assembled a unique group of exceptional players who have managed to play an instrumental role in defining the wireless sector. Telstra, China Mobile, eAccess and many others committed to join us. We trust that we will manage to see them again in September.

We will contact you in the next weeks and I look forward to working with you. I appreciate your understanding and I trust we will speak soon,